MOSCOW - One poster stands out among the billboards splashed across Moscow for celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany: Josef Stalin against the backdrop of a Red Army soldier raising the Soviet hammer-and-sickle over the Reichstag in Berlin.

Stalin always has been a contradictory figure in Russia, seen as either the powerful boss who led the country to victory over the Nazis and made it a 20th century industrial giant or the tyrant responsible for killing millions of his own people.

Under President Vladimir Putin, he appears to be making a comeback, with monuments in the works and criticism muted.

After waves of denouncements following Stalin's death in 1953 and as Soviets learned in the 1980s the full extent of his crimes, the Kremlin has been quiet about Stalin in recent years.

Putin rarely has harsh words for him. In a rare critical statement, Putin told Germany's Bild newspaper on Thursday that Stalin was a tyrant, but added that he should not be compared to the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

"I can't understand you equating Stalin and Hitler. It goes without saying that Stalin was a tyrant, whom many call a criminal. But he wasn't a Nazi," Putin said.

"I can't understand you equating Stalin and Hitler. It goes without saying that Stalin was a tyrant, whom many call a criminal. But he wasn't a Nazi," Putin said.

Old Vlad is probably thinking that Hitler's racist ideology, which called for the subjugation and possibly the eventual extermination of Slavs, made the prospect of a Nazi-ruled Russia somewhat more sisnister than that of a Communist-ruled one.

Nazism...Communism are just labels.....not much difference in their racist policies. They were both EVIL

I'd agree. At the root tyranny, no matter what alleged political stripe, has the same destructive / oppressive nature.

The phony left / right thing is largely perpetuated by cunning Hegelian despots; global puppeteers exploiting ideology in an effort to further entrench total political gain & confusion / division amongst the ignorant masses.